A Few Bullets
by J. R. Miller
In December of 1980, John Lennon was shot outside his New York City apartment. I knew of The Beatles and John Lennon, but I was young, so I didn’t understand who The Beatles were—who John Lennon was. On TV, the news showed pictures of distraught fans—thousands of people carrying candles, crying, and holding vigil outside his home. It seemed to me, even at that young age, that the world had changed because John Lennon was dead.
A few months later, the president was shot and a few months after that, the pope was shot. Both shootings were also on the news, yet these events were different. Maybe because these two men didn’t die. Maybe because these two events were an old-fashioned “assassination” attempt, not an up-close murder. Or maybe the deaths of these two men, if they had died, wouldn’t have changed the world all that much. We would get a new pope, a new president, but we would never get a new John Lennon. And because those people outside Lennon’s home already knew this, they wept and paid tribute. It wasn’t until they found Kurt Cobain’s body, in 1994, that I was able to understand this type of communicable loss and grief.
Picture this: it’s Friday night, or maybe Saturday night. But then it’s not really night anymore, but morning. One-ish. Two-ish. Last call has come and gone. We ordered three for the road because we knew the music would play for at least another hour. And they wouldn’t actually kick us out till four.
The air is fog-thick, filled with smoke—sweet, punchy, and stale. And it’s dark—black like night. The vinyl-covered chairs and booths, the tables, the concrete floor, the light fixtures are all black. It’s hard to guess the actual color of the walls—tonight, in this light and smoke, they are dark gray.
Imagine it’s as loud as it is dark—the music grimy and angry. The singer screams to a fast beat of industrial guitar riffs sampled and mixed with destructive electronic beats.
At the DJ booth, I need to yell to be heard and my throat is tired. Still I yell something into Nathan’s ear, something funny, because he laughs. He screams back, “Oh, I got a tape for you.” He turns to his equipment bag and starts rifling through the tangle of cassettes, CDs and what looks to be a change of clothes. I’ve become something like friends with Nathan. Every so often, I bring a cold beer back to him, bum him a Marlboro or bum one from him. We talk about real bands with real guitars and real drums. He gives me tapes of new music, demos mostly, underground stuff by bands I never heard of, and will probably never hear again.